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Wild, Wild East

Words | Minty Clinch Vast, untamed and virtually untouched, the best way to experience Kyrgyzstan’s natural splendour is riding with the country’s traditional eagle-hunters THE MOOD WAS UPBEAT as our small group headed towards the Ton Pirival pass, the beginning of our ride on the Nomad Trail. In the lead: veteran eagle hunter Sogam Bai, [...]

Words | Minty Clinch

Vast, untamed and virtually untouched, the best way to experience Kyrgyzstan’s natural splendour is riding with the country’s traditional eagle-hunters

THE MOOD WAS UPBEAT as our small group headed towards the Ton Pirival pass, the beginning of our ride on the Nomad Trail. In the lead: veteran eagle hunter Sogam Bai, with the magnificent bird Karabala perched proudly on his arm. Behind him: our Italian horsemaster Dom Mocchi and nine mounted ladies, eight of them British. Our mission: high adventure in the Tien Shan ‘Celestial’ Mountains in northern Kyrgyzstan.

Our first dinner, a lavish feast prepared by Sogam Bai’s womenfolk in the family home, laid down a marker for the rest of the trip. “Every time you drink, you must make a toast,” our host insisted, the only English phrase he knew. With vodka costing less than mineral water, there were many toasts before we reached our billet in a circular herdsman’s yurt. Burrowing deep in our sleeping bags, we huddled as far away from the white felt walls as possible, the better to preserve body heat in the intense cold.

Shortly after daybreak we urged our horses up the 4,040-metre pass, the gateway to an open landscape virtually unchanged since early Silk Route traders passed this way 2,000 years ago.

Kyrgyzstan is one of the smaller Central Asian republics, with huge oilrich Kazakhstan to the north, turbulent Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikstan and China to the south and east. Our route took us from Issyk Kul, the second largest alpine lake in the world, to Son Kul, a 300km loop among the flocks of sheep, goats, horses, cows and yaks that graze unfenced pastures through the short summer.

Unless you’re a golden eagle, getting up to them is not as simple as it sounds. Eagle hunting is a traditional Kyrgyz activity, with the birds trained to kill marmots and other animals for sport in summer and to blind wolves in winterso that they can readily be shot. However, Karabala showed minimal interest in his historic calling, preferring to accept raw meat direct from his master’s hand. Meanwhile our horses lurched forwards through deep snow under sustained pressure from Dom Mocchi and his Kyrgyz team while we inched upwards over icy scree, puffing in oxygen-starved air as we clung on by our fingertips. Fortunately no one let go. “I love the English,” said Dom over a late well-earned picnic lunch. “They never complain.”

The advantage of doing the hardest thing first is that the rest seems easier, though not that easy when the choice is between eight hours a day in the saddle and giving your bottom a break by walking beside your horse. We ladies divided pretty equally into those who’d ridden since birth and those who had just taken their first few lessons in anticipation of a two-week holiday in the saddle.

Paula, who always emerged from her tent looking as if she’d spent the morning in Harrods’s beauty salon, had learned from a private instructor in Hyde Park, while Sophie, an accountant from Kingston-upon-Thames, had never ridden outside an enclosed school. When I asked her why, she said her instructor felt she had no brakes. As her pony bounced off randomly into the distance, I could understand his point of view, but Sophie’s glorious smile never wavered whenever her steed decided to rejoin the herd.

Over the next week, we enjoyed spectacular mountain scenery as our horses picked their way through gorges and canyons, circumnavigated bogs and galloped over grassland carpeted in wild flowers. Marmots whistled as we approached, disappearing into their burrows with a flick of a tail, while griffon and lammergeier vultures, with wingspans of up to 3 metres, swooped down whenever they spotted a free meal. Herdsmen offered fresh milk or kumys (fermented mare’s milk), but otherwise we saw no trace of civilisation beyond the occasional empty vodka bottle.

Each night we camped by a river, our luggage transferred in 4x4s by Mumbet, Dom’s inexhaustible secondin- command. Mostly we washed circumspectly in icy water, but occasionally we struck lucky with a sulphur hot spring or a Mumbet special, a rudimentary sauna rigged up in a tent on a river bank. His wife Leilia used a single gas ring to prepare delectable food for 20: rich stews – no shortage of meat on the hoof – or fried river fish, with salads and fruit that tasted like they had never seen a pesticide. Breakfast brought fried eggs and bacon, pancakes and naturalyogurt, plus a certain reluctance to climb back into the saddle.

There was no shortage of adventure, but the highlight came when three wild-eyed Kyrgyz herdsmen demanded money with menaces. Fuelled by kumys, they barged their horses into ours, waving their whips aggressively. Horsemen from birth, they couldn’t be out-manoeuvred but they were readily bought for a couple of cigarettes and 20 som (30p). Who are we to grudge them that?
Minty Clinch travelled with Wild Frontiers [+44 (0)20 7736 3968; office@wildfrontiers.co.uk] Nomad Trail, 29 June-11 July. Alternative riding holidays in Kyrgyzstan, mid-June to early September, www.wildfrontiers.co.uk